More than 14 million tax returns were flagged for manual review this filing season, and over a million taxpayers waited about five and a half extra weeks for refunds that would normally arrive on schedule. On top of that backlog, a federal move away from mailing paper refund checks is slowing some payments further. For retirees who count a refund into a tight monthly budget, the combination has turned an expected sum into an open-ended wait, with the delay falling hardest on those who filed on paper and asked to be paid by mail.
Manual review is holding up more than 14 million returns
A return pulled for manual review does not move through the automated pipeline that clears most refunds within a few weeks. Instead a human examiner has to look at it, and that step adds time measured in weeks rather than days. This season, more than 14 million returns landed in that queue, and among them over a million filers experienced roughly five and a half additional weeks of waiting before their money came through. The delay is not a penalty or a sign of wrongdoing; it is the processing cost of the review itself.
Returns get flagged for a range of ordinary reasons, from identity checks to figures that do not immediately match the records the government already holds. The National Taxpayer Advocate, an independent watchdog inside the tax agency, has tracked these processing strains and publishes updates through its news and reports. For an older filer, the practical takeaway is that a return can be entirely correct and still sit in review, so a refund that has not arrived is not necessarily lost or rejected.
A filer often learns of the holdup only indirectly, when the online status tool stops showing a scheduled deposit date or a promised check simply fails to appear, because the agency does not always send a separate notice the moment a return is routed to an examiner. That silence is part of what makes the wait so unsettling for a household that planned around the money, since nothing about an accurate return warns in advance that it will be pulled. There is also rarely a way to move a return to the front of an examiner’s queue once it is in review, which leaves waiting as the main option even when the return is plainly correct.
Free retirement updates: Miss an enrollment or claim deadline and it may be gone. Our free Retirement Shield newsletter keeps readers ahead of the ones that matter. Get the free newsletter.
The federal shift away from mailed paper checks
The second source of delay is structural. The federal government is phasing out mailed paper checks for refunds, part of a broader push toward electronic payment across agencies. During that transition, a refund routed as a paper check can move more slowly than one sent electronically, and the printing and mailing steps add days on top of any review time. A retiree who both filed on paper and requested a mailed check sits at the intersection of the two slowdowns.
The change matters most for people who have long relied on the mail. Older filers are more likely than younger ones to submit a paper return and to expect a physical check in the mailbox, the method they have used for decades. As the paper-check option narrows, that habit becomes the slowest path to the money. The agency’s refund guidance explains how a refund’s status can be tracked and reflects the emphasis on electronic delivery.
None of this reduces the amount owed to the taxpayer. A delayed refund is still paid in full, and the government pays interest on refunds held beyond a set point in some circumstances. But interest does not help a household that budgeted around the refund arriving on time. The consequence of the paper-check phase-out is timing, and for a fixed-income retiree, timing is often the whole problem.
Why direct deposit and e-filing avoid the wait
The clearest way around both delays is to file electronically and choose direct deposit. An electronically filed return enters the automated system without the manual keying that a paper return requires, which removes one common cause of slow processing and error flags. Pairing that with direct deposit means the refund lands in a bank account without any printing or mailing, sidestepping the paper-check slowdown entirely. The tax agency’s instructions on having a refund deposited directly describe how a filer designates the account.
For a retiree who has always filed on paper, the shift is not trivial, and free filing help exists for older taxpayers who want assistance moving to an electronic return. The key point is that the faster method is available to anyone with a bank account, and it is the same method the government is steering all filers toward. Choosing it in advance is what converts a refund from an uncertain wait into a predictable deposit.
For anyone already caught in the current backlog, the money is still coming, and the status can be checked rather than guessed at. A return in manual review will clear when an examiner reaches it, and a mailed check will arrive even as the paper-check system winds down. The lesson the season leaves is that the slow lane and the fast lane are now clearly separated: a paper return with a mailed check is the slow lane, and an electronic return with direct deposit is the fast one. A retiree who plans next year’s filing around that split is the one least likely to spend another spring waiting on a refund that was earned months earlier.
This article was researched and drafted with the assistance of artificial intelligence.
More Financial Reading
